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@liare
How about a transition in industry? As most people you seem to be focused on the consumer side, offcourse it needs more change, but the industrial Production side are the real heavy polluters.

Any thoughts there?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn LENNY2 met Tapatalk

That depends on the industry. Take straws for instance, the company buying the plastic granulates and producing the actual straws have very little waste by necessity. Margins are razor thin and minimizing waste is an advantage against your competitors.

The same thing is true for flexible packaging, ie any plastic wrapper around toilet rolls, frozen foods packaging, crisp bags, coffee packages etc etc. These companies work very hard at using as little material as possible in their packages.

When it comes to straws there's a good argument to be made about the necessity of the product. But when it comes to the way we shop, transport and store our food, getting rid of plastics would require some serious rethink in how we produce and consume stuff. There are currently no viable alternatives.

@liare
How about a transition in industry? As most people you seem to be focused on the consumer side, offcourse it needs more change, but the industrial Production side are the real heavy polluters.

Any thoughts there?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn LENNY2 met Tapatalk

That depends on the industry. Take straws for instance, the company buying the plastic granulates and producing the actual straws have very little waste by necessity. Margins are razor thin and minimizing waste is an advantage against your competitors.

The same thing is true for flexible packaging, ie any plastic wrapper around toilet rolls, frozen foods packaging, crisp bags, coffee packages etc etc. These companies work very hard at using as little material as possible in their packages.

When it comes to straws there's a good argument to be made about the necessity of the product. But when it comes to the way we shop, transport and store our food, getting rid of plastics would require some serious rethink in how we produce and consume stuff. There are currently no viable alternatives.

all the joy of running with scissors, now with the added fun of holding them against the roof of your mouth!

I like items like this, they are great time savers.
If you see somebody fish one of these out of their jacket, take it out of it's exotic wooden case and use it, you can be about 99% confident that he's a total wanker without having to speak to him.

@liare
How about a transition in industry? As most people you seem to be focused on the consumer side, offcourse it needs more change, but the industrial Production side are the real heavy polluters.

Any thoughts there?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn LENNY2 met Tapatalk

End an economic system that only exists to optimise production for the sake of production and creates false needs in society to drive consumption? If we stopped advertising a perfect life achievable through the consumption of commodities you reduce pointless production and go some way to solve a host of societal issues. Two birds with one stone.

Have you ever seen people with shoe and handbag collections? They're arguably more insane than doomsday preppers.

Obligatory: The situationists were right.

Originally Posted by Paul Mason

It is absurd that we are capable of witnessing a 40,000 year old system of gender oppression begin to dissolve before our eyes yet still see the abolition of a 200 year old economic system as an unrealistic utopia.

Proof that the market isn't a sufficient mechanism for even slightly helping the environment in any meaningful way.

Originally Posted by Paul Mason

It is absurd that we are capable of witnessing a 40,000 year old system of gender oppression begin to dissolve before our eyes yet still see the abolition of a 200 year old economic system as an unrealistic utopia.

@liare
How about a transition in industry? As most people you seem to be focused on the consumer side, offcourse it needs more change, but the industrial Production side are the real heavy polluters.

Any thoughts there?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn LENNY2 met Tapatalk

plenty, but it's stuff with a significantly smaller impact on the individuals here.

simply put, planned obsolescence gotta go as part of a move towards a circular economy and overall consumption needs to come down, ideally the majority of that reduction can be realized by making goods less shit and longer lasting in the process, the objective is not to put people in concrete prison blocs, but to create a sustainable "good life" for the population of the planet as a whole, of course i can't see a way to do this in practice that doesn't also address the fact our socio-economic system is basically cannibalizing itself without 2%-5% of growth every year, infinite growth on a finite planet and all that, keckers "Shoe and handbag collectors" being a emblematic example of the sort of thing that's gotta go long term.

beyond that we're moving into specifics where i don't really have the knowledge or insight to contribute something valuable.

@liare
How about a transition in industry? As most people you seem to be focused on the consumer side, offcourse it needs more change, but the industrial Production side are the real heavy polluters.

Any thoughts there?

Verstuurd vanaf mijn LENNY2 met Tapatalk

End an economic system that only exists to optimise production for the sake of production and creates false needs in society to drive consumption? If we stopped advertising a perfect life achievable through the consumption of commodities you reduce pointless production and go some way to solve a host of societal issues. Two birds with one stone.

Have you ever seen people with shoe and handbag collections? They're arguably more insane than doomsday preppers.

Obligatory: The situationists were right.

I dont disagree but i was more talking about industrial production like refinery's, metal smelters etc etc because the energy they use, and residual/waste products, dwarfs the savings from going led light bulbs or recycling on a household scale (even on a global level). I am not really well read up on the industry part hence i was asking.

Schopenhauer:

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident..

ideally you'd want those running when you've got a surplus of energy available from renewable sources, i would argue for a "usage hierarchy" That goes domestic consumption > light industry/commercial consumption > heavy industry consumption, however some industrial processes, specifically stuff dealing in metals aren't really something you can just shut down and start up in a couple of hours, any sort of sane power-grid relies on nuclear plants for base load and come with a heavy focus on renewable sources.

waste products can, generally speaking, be managed and often recycled successfully and it's actually something European industry has gotten really good at the last 20 or so years from my understanding, beyond that it's often possible to exploit said waste products, waste heat from this place basically provide around half the city's central heating.

....and trying to move the global "baseline" for a "good life" per western standards down towards something that is reasonably feasible for say, more than 15-20% of the world's population.

I'd be very interested to hear what a good quality of life would be in your preferred future.

If you put together all the tech available today and combine it with a dramatic change in behavior of us, I think the resulting comfort level wouldn't be that much lower than today. But we (as in "mankind") would need to do things vastly different, especially in production. And it would require some heavy regulations to be enacted.

E.g. just look at all the throwaway chunk that's currently produced and consumed and for every single piece a renewable/reusable alternative exists, e.g. plastic cutlery or bags. One doesn't even need to think hard to probably list hundreds of items. Next point on the list: product design. Priorize fixing/repairing over replacing, i.e. non-replaceable cell phone batteries.

Oh, and my personal pet peeve, christmas time. I find it mind-boggling that in this day and age, it's still allowed to waste god-knows-how-much MW for electric candles and similar stuff. I really wish someone would do a study and publish the numbers.

....and trying to move the global "baseline" for a "good life" per western standards down towards something that is reasonably feasible for say, more than 15-20% of the world's population.

I'd be very interested to hear what a good quality of life would be in your preferred future.

significantly altered transportation patterns, specifically long haul travel being a lengthier affair as a side effect of curtailing passenger flights but also in terms of eliminating the car as a "household" object, replacing it with some combination of public transportation and shuttle services where applicable. reduced meat consumption and a concerted drive towards "efficient" housing over prestige housing. less mcmansions more low-rise tenement blocs with a eye towards resource efficiency in terms of water usage and heating, there are things we're going to have to do without, out-of-season vegetables come to mind, cheap bananas shipped in from the Caribbean is another obvious candidate, managed power consumption, so no running the tumble-drier a day with no wind and overcast skies and such.

agriculture especially is going to need a complete re-thinking towards long term sustainability, hence the need to give our food consumption habits a good look-over, unless of course people decide it's ethically defensible to starve fellow humans because they want hamburgers.

I appreciate your taking the time to answer and in detail.

There are aspects of this I would/could support, in small doses and where it suits (like transit).

I think you'd have a hard time getting most "1st World" citizens to buy-in.

getting public support for such measures is actually the easier part, the public consensus across the EU is essentially "we're not doing enough to address climate change" and every point outlined above as a clear connection to the overall goal.

no, the problem is the actual implementation against the interests of people with money to lose, Dieselgate being a wonderful example. (and the proper response would have been to outlaw the sale of fossil fuel cars per 2020, if the manufacturers can't keep to the rules they fucking designed, then they can adapt or die)

I can't speak for the EU.

I can generalize about the U.S., and I generally think you underestimate the difficulty here.

Imagine for an utopian moment that most of the world (aka "US' trade partners") have adapted some kind of policy, which forbids the import of products not manufactored according to <highly resource efficient> guidelines. How long are the U.S. citizens willing to descend down the wealth ladder*), until that notion would be overcome?

Oh, and my personal pet peeve, christmas time. I find it mind-boggling that in this day and age, it's still allowed to waste god-knows-how-much MW for electric candles and similar stuff. I really wish someone would do a study and publish the numbers.

I dunno, christmas lighting really helps suppress those urges to end it all during that dark and dreary period of the year.*

The blockchain however, that just doesn't do anything worthwhile and it probably consumes more energy.

Oh, and my personal pet peeve, christmas time. I find it mind-boggling that in this day and age, it's still allowed to waste god-knows-how-much MW for electric candles and similar stuff. I really wish someone would do a study and publish the numbers.

I dunno, christmas lighting really helps suppress those urges to end it all during that dark and dreary period of the year.*

The blockchain however, that just doesn't do anything worthwhile and it probably consumes more energy.

Edit. *Tounge in cheek required.

I like Christmas and the lighting, it genuinely makes me less depressed. And that can take some doing.
it is massively wasteful obviously though, can't argue there.